Killer Cases: Season 3, Episode 8

3 - 8: A Mother's Secret

In the spring of 1993, two newspaper carriers driving down a rural road spotted what they thought was a doll but which turned out to be, in fact, a newborn baby's body. The coroner would determine that the baby had been born alive; but his origin was a mystery. The community called the baby Geauga's Child, after the name of the county; they made clothes for his funeral and paid for his burial. Despite dozens of leads and even a hidden camera placed at the cemetery in hopes that the child's mother would show up, no arrests were made for 25 years. Then, with modern DNA and familial genealogy techniques, the cold case was solved, identifying the boy's mother as the now middle-aged Gail Eastwood-Ritchey. Years before, as a young unmarried woman, she had delivered the baby, stillborn, and placed his body in a trash bag in a wooded area. After a four-day trial, Eastwood-Richey was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.